Wipe off that smile. The worst is yet to come

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The deep cuts that Britain still requires should take us, in 2018, to where we were in 1997 – when our problems began

On the morning of May 2, 1997, I woke up feeling terrible. It wasn’t just that I had spent the past six weeks eating pizza and crisps and sleeping for less than five hours a night in a small rented flat round the corner from the office. Or that a man who didn’t like Tories much kept phoning my home saying that he was following me and intended to kill me.

It was more that I was a loser. An historic loser. I had just finished working for the Conservative Party in one of its biggest ever defeats. Perhaps the